1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of generating a recipe which substitutes process parameters set in a parameter file for process parameters such as a processing time, a processing temperature, and the like, which are set in a recipe for processing a substrate, a substrate processing apparatus which executes the generated recipe, and a method of manufacturing a semiconductor device which uses the generated recipe.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a substrate processing apparatus such as a vertical film-forming device or the like, a boat equipped with a plurality of (several tens to hundreds of) substrates is accommodated in a processing chamber, a pressure or a temperature inside the processing chamber is set as a predetermined value by heating a process gas while supplying the process gas, and various kinds of processes are performed on a substrate surface using a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method and the like. When introducing the process gas into a processing furnace to process the introduced process gas in a state in which substrates with different film thicknesses, for example, a dummy substrate and a product substrate are mixed in such a substrate processing apparatus, a film thickness deposited on the product substrate varies with an accumulated film thickness deposited on the boat, a furnace wall of the processing furnace, and the dummy substrate, or varies with the number of product substrates loaded on the boat. Thus, in order to suppress variation of the film thickness deposited on the product substrate, with regard to the accumulated film thickness, heating control may be performed using a relationship between the accumulated film thickness and a temperature as described in Patent Document 1 below, and with regard to the number of product substrates, a recipe according to the number of product substrates may be generated as described in Patent Document 2 below.
In general, in order to perform desired processing on the product substrate, it is necessary to generate an optimized recipe (process recipe, especially in this case). In this instance, in the process recipe, process parameters such as a processing time, a pressure and a temperature inside a processing chamber, and the like are set. For example, as described in Patent Document 3 below, a recipe is efficiently generated using a common parameter. Here, the common parameter refers to a parameter which is used in a case of setting process parameters having the same numeric value in each processing step of the recipe, and the like. By setting the common parameter in advance, an operation of inputting the process parameters in each processing step can be conveniently omitted.
However, in order to perform film thickness control according to variation of the accumulated film thickness or variation of the number of product substrates, it is necessary to adjust values of the process parameters in detail, but such detailed adjustment is not considered in the above-described common parameter. Thus, when generating a process recipe for performing film thickness control according to variation of the accumulated film thickness or variation of the number of product substrates, many process parameters should be set by manual inputs of an operator, which causes troublesomeness. In addition, it is difficult to remove operator's input errors, and when the process recipe is executed using a wrong process parameter, it is highly likely that the product will be discarded.
1. Japanese Patent Publication No. 2003-109906
2. Japanese Patent Publication No. 2005-093747
3. Japanese Patent Publication No. 2000-133595